Sunday, August 11, 2013

National Organization for Marrige Under Investigation in Iowa

This story makes me happy for a number of reasons, chief among them that the National Organization for Marriage (NOM) might be in hot water. But there are many other reasons, among them:

- My husband is from Iowa
- We're legally married in the state of California, no thanks to NOM's efforts to undo that
- A sanctimonious Iowa preacher who is a former classmate, and his friend, a sanctimonious Iowa radio show host would hate for NOM to get into trouble or for them to have to disclose their donors

NOM's Brian Brown crying from a different loss. Let'shope he does a whole lot more of this.Image from ThinkProgress.

NOM is one of the leading anti-gay groups in the country, and is allied with most of the rest. It is curious why and how they are so powerful, when their actual following is so small. For instance, they are trying to get up to 10,000 followers on Twitter, and are only 3/4 of the way there. Consider that *I* follow them on Twitter, as do many other gay rights activists, and you can safely bet they're not even half-way to their goal, with actual supporters. That's a very, very small pool of people. On Facebook, they fare slightly better with about 36,000 followers. But the situation there is similar: many of the followers are actually just keeping tabs on them, again, like I do.

This is a tiny organization, that has had some major successes, mostly in the past. Their last big victory that wasn't already a forgone conclusion (as in North Carolina) was when they managed to recall three Iowa Supreme Court judges for acknowledging the right to same-sex marriage in the state. They were not successful on their next try, and have been steadily losing their mojo. But it would be interesting, nonetheless to see exactly who is funding these guys.

[Excerpt]NOM slapped with ethics investigation in IowaThe National Organization for Marriage is being investigated by an Iowa ethics committee, amid allegations that the group violated state law when it did not disclose its donors in a campaign to oust state Supreme Court justices. . .